


A Matter of Time

by Tammany



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Regeneration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 20:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15893484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: Doctor Who, bless it, has grown so complex and interwoven that it becomes a very different kind of "time" than we mere mortals usually experience. But--if it's anything, it's crammed full to bursting with life. A fact that the Doctor, with his/her dread of loss, loses track of.I just rewatched "Twice Upon A Time," and came out with a story that dumps our newest Doctor into HER regeneration before we've even seen her in her new glory. Sorry. But--it seemed like the vital way to respond to the final joy and sorrow of Capaldi/Moffat's goodbye-Doctor. I love both--Capaldi and Moffat. But their final Doctor lost track of something--something they've all been losing track of ever since Chris Eccleston brought us the shell-shocked, traumatized Doctor fleeing from his own guilt and grief in the aftermath of the Time Wars and the Moment.  I think the point will not be lost on y'all. But in truth, I wrote it because I want the point to be not-lost on some Doctor. It's high time that clever girl/boy learned the obvious truth....





	A Matter of Time

The energy flickered through her, setting her nerves alight and her fingers on fire.

It was time, she thought. Time to decide, again.

Live—or die. Regenerate—or refuse.

Now, on the cliff’s edge of this incarnation, she could remember the last—and the one before that, and before that, and before that, back to the very first. She could feel it—the heavy weight of deaths that had burdened them. The long, long life that had expanded to exceed anything even a Time Lord expected.

The wind of time, she thought, not quite coherent. It swept and buffeted her, currents and cross-currents, fixed points that failed to remain nailed down and fluctuating moments that somehow stayed still and firm even when the shifting fields of temporal chaos wiped them away: they were still there, unchanging, held firm because the Doctor would not let them go.

“Then let me go,” said a voice from a mere regeneration ago—the somber, aching voice of a lean man with hair like a silver tempest and a northern burr like a highland bull made manifest. A grumpy highland bull. A sad, mourning bull, lowing for lost herds. “Let me go. Let *us* go.”

She held herself tight, arms wrapped around delicate ribs, fingers gripping the happy, light, sky-blue trench coat, too-short trousers fluttering around her shins. “I don’t want to go,” she said to the old man one scant breath ago.

“An empty battlefield,” the old man said, and she could imagine his hearts breaking. So many dead.

“Just this once, Rose. Just this once—everybody lives!” The voice was older, and younger, sadder, and more vividly joyful.

The Doctor remembered that day, and others wrenched from death itself. The days everybody lived.

“What’s the point?” The Master and Missy sprawled together in her memory, old, beloved, deadly, dastardly, and so very, very dear to her. “We all die in the end. All lives end. All hearts are broken.”

She shook her head, golden hair sweeping back and forth over her brow. “No—no. Missing something…”

“We are tangled through time,” the old, sad man said. “And everybody dies.”

“Sweetie, you can be such a dunce.” Another voice from memory—or, no. Not from memory.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” the Doctor said to the echo from the library.

The echo winked. “All anyone will ever tell you is that when the wind stands fair and the night is perfect, when you least expect it, but always... when you need it the most,,, there is a song. That man. That impossible man. He saved me, you know. Forever.”

The Doctor felt her hearts break—and regenerate, new and bright. “You…never die.”

“Not until the universe ends. And, my dearest, my love—you never let it end.” River shook wild curls at her Doctor, and said, fondly, “It’s not an empty battlefield, love. It’s not forever empty—it’s forever full, because of you. Because of what you have done to time, and to yourself. Endless as eternity. Knotted and twisted back on itself. No one ever dies. They don’t even stay stable. We’re all here, and we all live forever, and all you have to do is pick us up like beloved books from dusty shelves, and read us again. And again. And again. We will be here for you every time, new every time, doing it all a bit differently every time. Forever. Until you choose to close your eyes and sleep.”

The Doctor looked at River, eyes glowing—body glowing, regeneration upon her. “And when I am tired of sleeping, I wake again, and take another book off the shelf…”

“Clever girl,” whispered Clara’s ghost. “Clever girl…”

“Oh, brilliant!” the Doctor said, and let the light take her.


End file.
